Decolonisation, Trans-Colonisation and Development: The Challenges of Changing Epistemic Concerns and Indigenous Knowledge Production in Africa

Joseph C. A. Agbakoba

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Chapter 6 Decolonisation, Trans-Colonisation and Development

The Challenges of Changing Epistemic Concerns and Indigenous Knowledge Production in Africa

In: Creating the New African University

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Joseph C. A. Agbakoba

Joseph C. A. Agbakoba
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 106–129

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004677432_006

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Abstract

This chapter departs from the notion that indigenous knowledge production is vital to development in Africa and goes on to point out the challenges to its production and dissemination concerning development in post-independence Africa. The chapter argues that development in the contemporaneous world demands the production of highly technical, scientific and organisational forms of rationalistic knowledge with concomitant epistemic virtues, and moral and social values. Therefore, Africa needs an epistemic orientational shift from the more intuitionist epistemic orientation of the traditional society, its epistemic virtues and its more partialist, particularistic moral and social values to a more rationalistic one; this shift, nevertheless, should integrate the beneficial processes and knowledge gains in the traditional paradigm. Therefore, the orientational shift expected is not one of discarding the traditional epistemic orientation but superseding and subsuming it into a modern knowledge production system that is thereby Africanised. The chapter examines how this is to be accomplished in the context of contestations about post-independence decolonisation and trans-colonisation. The chapter critiques decolonisation conceived as radical de-westernisation and identitarian essentialism, showing its inadequacy. It argues in favour of trans-colonisation (transcending colonisation), which emphasises indigenous epistemic creativity, freedom from the dictates of non-functional identitarian essentialism and the freedom of the African to appropriate and adapt from African knowledge resources, the colonial legacy and global resources, guided by truth, functionality and aesthetics. It is argued that trans-colonisation supports interculturality and heterosis (vigorous hybridity) in knowledge production and is also positioned to address issues of epistemic injustice and epistemicide. The chapter also looks generally at the implications of this perspective for the research and pedagogical agenda of educational institutions in Africa. The research design in this work is basically philosophical content analysis and evaluation involving conceptual exposition and clarification, logical and philosophical analysis and hermeneutics.

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Creating the New African University

Series: African Higher Education: Developments and Perspectives, Volume: 16

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004677432

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 18 May 2023

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Chapter 6 Decolonisation, Trans-Colonisation and Development

The Challenges of Changing Epistemic Concerns and Indigenous Knowledge Production in Africa

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Creating the New African University

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